living with borderline (BPD)

Rage

For the last few days, my BPD-rage is once more the most unpleasant symptom. I call it BPD-rage because it is so different from ordinary anger that is caused by something annoying. I can cope with being angry about parties, society, homophobe or racist idiots. It feels justified and powerful. The kind of anger that gives you the strength to say and change things.

BPD-rage is inappropriate. It makes you impotent. It paralyzes you although, or maybe because it is so intense. It comes suddenly and hits you in the face. It is rock-hard and feels like an adrenaline rush. It makes me think things I don’t want to think. It doesn’t feel like a part of me, after all I wouldn’t harm a fly. It keeps me from thinking clearly and hits me because of all sorts of small stupid things. Once it’s there it’s incredibly hard to get rid of it.

And because I get angry over things like traffic lights that don’t turn green fast enough, phones that ring or leaves of lettuce that aren’t cut small enough to be eaten comfortably,…so really just over ANYTHING, i don’t see how I coul let the rage out. Shouting is never okay but if at least I had a proper reason…I can’t just go berserk because of nothing all the time. And I don’t but every time the rage hits me it gets increasingly difficult to control it. Sometimes I curse or kick my desk (which obviously isn’t guilty of anything) but just a second after that I feel overwhelmingly ashamed. Shame is the only consequence of anger I know.

So I write with a thousand exclamation marks that I delete afterwars to sound more moderate. I am not an irascible person. I know this text sounds like I am but when I’m well I’m not like that. Therefore I can clearly define this rage as a symptom, it’s so different from everything else and I have no idea what to do with it. If I wasn’t that controlled I would hurt people – with words or even acts. And it wouldn’t be me, it would be the anger that drives me. I am what you could call a radical pacifist, in my life there is no space for something that turns me into a monster. I don’t want to be ticking time bomb of which I don’t know just when it will blow up everything.